


until we dance again

by utterebba



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Episode: s02e08 The Blood of Juana the Mad, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24105994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utterebba/pseuds/utterebba
Summary: “Is that why we don’t touch?” she asks.“We do touch,” he reminds her. “You’re always touching me.”
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 28
Kudos: 161





	until we dance again

**Author's Note:**

> A short and unnecessary extension to s02e08. Shakespeare quotes are, of course, from Antony and Cleopatra. Stay safe x

“There is a Cuban dance,” she is telling him, “where the partners gyrate around each other and never touch. They are always well within reach, and yet the entire object is to advance and retreat, advance and retreat. Why do you think they might have invented such a dance? Surely the very purpose of partner-dancing is to invite the touch of a person otherwise untouchable?”

Jack is, by now, well used to these tangential fragments of thought during evenings spent drinking Phryne Fisher’s whisky. Earlier in the night they had spoken of foxtrots and tangos and waltzes, but they had lapsed into a quietude since then and it seems her mind has stayed on roughly the same road. There is little doubt in his mind that she will be engaging the services of a handsome Cuban dance instructor by next week at the very latest and equally assured that once she has mastered the dance to her satisfaction, she will dismiss him again. 

“I would imagine,” he answers with a studiously blank expression, “that it had something to do with creating a sort of tension between the dancers. People like to think that they only want the things they cannot have.”

“Not me,” says Miss Fisher. 

He ought to be awarded a medal for containing the snort that wants to break free when she says this. “No,” he agrees. “Not you.”

“Is that why we don’t touch?” she asks.

His mouth twitches a little without his permission, but he finds that he doesn’t mind letting her in on the non-secret of his fond amusement. “We  do touch,” he reminds her. “You’re always touching me.”

It must have sounded like a challenge, because she rises from her divan in a smooth, elegant motion. As is generally the case, she had been artistically draped in such a manner as to provide him with a distracting view of her calves. Now, she is moving purposely towards him in slow, careful steps. She looks nothing like the tigers at Melbourne Zoo, who pace and whine and seem rather too constrained for Jack’s liking, but there is something feline about her. A huntress stalking her prey. “Not the way I’d like to touch you,” she says in a low voice. Her cat’s eyes are glinting. 

The first instinct is to say  _ and how, Miss Fisher, would you like to touch me? _ But this would definitely be a challenge. There are things that they simply don’t say to each other. He offers an apologetic smile and tries not to shift uncomfortably. In a concession to the desire he is trying very hard to deny, he unfolds his legs and recrosses them instead at the ankle. Her gaze catches this and is very slow to return to his. She smiles her tiger-smile, and knows that she has detected correctly. As she always does. 

“Jack?” By now she is leaning over his chair. He notices that her hand is close to where his loosely holds the empty glass and wonders whether she might offer him a fresh drink should he fail to reciprocate her advances, as though that were the entire reason she had approached him in the first place. He places it carefully on the side table. Their faces are very close to each other. Her perfume is sweet and never cloying.  _ She makes hungry where most she satisfies _ , he thinks deliriously. He is starving. This room is too small to hold them. He is one of those captured beasts, measuring out the dimensions of his cage. 

She won’t push him much more than this, he knows. They have now reached the part of the dance where he ought to signal a retreat by clearing his throat or standing to leave or requesting another glass of her very fine whisky. He has learned the signs of her disappointment in these moments, though he knows that she does not really expect him to follow through on the gauntlets that he throws down anymore. Sometimes he wonders whether he does so only in order to truly shock her one day when she offers everything to him on a whim and he accepts. 

Probably it would be in this very room. She would put her hand on his forearm and massage it very slowly, as she has done only once or twice before. Their mouths would be very close as they spoke, like they always seem to be these days. It would be no trouble at all to press his lips to hers, to place a hand on the soft skin of her cheek or in the sleek bob of her hair. But she would not be surprised. He cannot fathom a version of events in which she is surprised. Always, she simply sighs and kisses him and kisses him. Maybe she whispers,  _ About time, Jack _ . She will be delightedly exasperated with him. 

It is a dangerous moment to be imagining this. She is near enough to taste such fanciful thoughts.

“We touch plenty,” says Jack, and runs a finger down the inside of her wrist to prove it. Her shudder is barely there and beautiful. “What we never do is talk.”

Phryne Fisher scoffs. She is leaning closer to him. If he had thought that she would pretend to be unaffected then he is sorely mistaken. He is always forgetting the rules of the game; she would never deny herself a feeling, that move is very much one of his own. 

“We talk constantly,” she says breathily. “What is it you want us to talk  _ about _ ?”

“Phryne,” he warns. His hand, somehow, is wrapped around her wrist now. He can feel her pulse there, fast and then faster. Is it the sound of her given name on his tongue? The syllables are heavy on his lips, a decadence he rarely allows them. Oh, he realises. That pulse racing isn’t hers - his own is echoing back to him through his fingertips. Blood is pounding, loud and erratic, in his veins. He wonders if she can feel it through her skin. 

She gives a little stuttered breath. “Jack,” she hums and he knows he is close to coming undone. His tie feels suddenly constricting and he swallows too heavily. She glances down to his neck and he is appalled to think that she might read him so easily. If she puts her hands there now, if she loosens and unbuttons for him, then he will explode, shatter, give in. His hand tightens around her wrist as though it would stop her were she determined. “You know waltzes haven’t been fashionable for years now,” she whispers, too close to his ear. He knows by the triumphant curve of her lips that she feels him shiver. 

“Yes,” he says, too low, lower than he meant to. “But I’m not a very fashionable man.” And this is what he had meant when he said that they don’t talk. All of these veiled metaphors, the endless meandering circles of conversation which will eventually spiral themselves into something far too dangerous. As always, the truest of his words die on his tongue. He struggles within himself and closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to look at her, though he can almost taste her perfume, can feel the heat of her all along his body, their heartbeats pulsing together under his fingers. His heart feels like a raw, shameless thing. 

“It’s late,” he says, long after he should have. “Perhaps I had better go.”

“Perhaps,” says Phryne, “you had better stay.”

Her fingers, the ones he isn’t holding captive, ghost across his closed eyes. He thinks he may die. If only having her wouldn’t feel like a loss. It could only be once, after all, and it shouldn’t be tonight. No, not tonight, when everything inside him still feels so heavy. It is easy to forget, in the dimness of the parlour with a glass in his hands and her eyes on him. 

_ That truth should be silent I had almost forgot _ , he thinks.

So he loosens his hand around her wrist and strokes once more at the softness that resides there. She has felt the shift, as she always does even when she pretends that she doesn’t. Her smile is a gentle, kind thing. She lets him stand, but makes sure that he has to brush against her to leave. It is not something that he can begrudge her. As always, she watches him go.

“Good night, Miss Fisher,” he says very quietly. 

“Until we dance again, Jack.”


End file.
